1272 
THE USE OF ANIMALS IN MEDICAL RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION 
Department of Agriculture's standards and 
regulations, and you also used guinea pigs, 
rabbits, hamsters, or non-human primates, 
then these additional four species had to come 
under the Department's standards. 
Public Law 89-544, as far as many of you 
were concerned, probably did not directly affect 
you, simply because it stopped at the research 
door. That particular Act, the Old Act, did not 
give the Department of Agriculture any author- 
ity to inspect animals that were actually under 
research as determined by the research facility. 
This was changed with the signing of the 
Animal Welfare Act of 1970, the New Act. 
During the time that we were administering 
the Old Act, the Department covered approxi- 
mately 1,500 research facility sites. These were 
sites where animals were maintained for re- 
search purposes. We had licensed a monthly 
average of around 205 dealers in laboratory 
dogs and cats. The administration of that Act 
was done by our field force. Many of you people 
have had contact with the Department inspec- 
tors. Most of my remarks are restricted to the 
research aspect and not the dealer's because this 
is primarily the part in which you're interested. 
The Department's inspectors by policy were 
veterinarians, so these were veterinarians who 
were coming to inspect your central animal care 
facilities. This in essence has been the program 
for the past four years. 
During 1970 there was a bill introduced in 
Congress to amend Public Law 89-544 and ex- 
pand its coverage considerably. This bill went 
into Committee; hearings were held, and the 
final version that was referred out of the full 
Committee on Agriculture on the House side 
was finally signed into law as Public Law 91- 
579. What did this new law do? Well, there were 
several things. Number one, I think it took away 
the emphasis on the animals used for research 
purposes. It recognized the fact -that humane 
care and handling should apply to animals for 
whatever purpose they were going to be used. 
It did this by covering not only animals which 
were going to be used for research purposes, 
but for exhibition and for pets. 
I'll just mention the exhibition animals 
briefly. The Act itself specified animals which 
were going to be used for exhibition in zoos, 
roadside zoos, carnivals, and circuses. Of course, 
the thing that it did not recognize at the time 
was that circuses were primarily made up of 
individual animal acts, where an owner owns 
the act and as a result is going to have to be 
licensed. So there are going to be very few 
circuses that will be licensed or registered 
under the New Act. 
What about the wholesale pet purposes? 
Again, it's for animals that are used, with cer- 
tain exceptions, or sold for wholesale pet pur- 
poses. It's somewhat redundant there, "Sold for 
wholesale pet purposes." There were certain 
exceptions and exclusions in the definition of 
dealer and exhibitor that I want to mention 
because they may or may not apply in the case 
of a research facility. One exclusion is the 
retail pet store. The retail pet stores are ex- 
cluded unless they sell to a dealer or to a re- 
search facility. If they do sell to a dealer or a 
research facility, then they must be licensed. 
We've found that there are a large number of 
pure-bred breeders that sell animals for pet pur- 
poses, which were going to have to be covered 
by the wording of the New Act. So in writing 
the regulation, we have put in the definition of 
retail pet store animals sold at a retail outlet 
for retail purposes. In effect this means that 
these hobby breeders, the pure-bred breeders, 
will not have to be licensed if they only sell at 
the retail level. But if they sell at wholesale 
level, they will have to be licensed. So in pro- 
curing some of these pure-bred animals, you 
will probably be getting them from a licensed 
source, in any case. 
Another provision of the New Act is that it 
took away the "dependence on commerce" and 
substituted "affecting commerce." When it did 
this it actually included any animals in intra- 
state commerce by the very wording of that 
particular phrase. So if you as a research facil- 
ity are obtaining your animals within the state, 
this means that you will have to be registered 
even though you do not get them across the state 
line because they will be burdening or affecting 
commerce. 
Now what is "animal" under the New Act? 
Animal is going to be the six species mentioned 
previously and, in addition, any warm-blooded 
animal that is normally found in the wild, 
